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where we call it out by name

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

My father-in-law sat on my couch during their week-long stay at our home and pulled my youngest son onto his lap. He held him, and then he proceeded to my absolute astonishment to name all of the positive character qualities that he is seeing develop in our seven-year-old young man. Gentlemanly. Kind. Polite. Well-behaved. He told him how proud he was of him and how much he loved him. He explained the qualities for our 1st grader who didn’t yet understand all the vocabulary. He told him that he wouldn’t just call anybody these names, that he saved naming these qualities for people he respected and loved.

Ever have one of those moments where you feel like Moses at the burning bush? Moses is in the desert, and God sends an angel to speak to him through this bush that looks like it’s on fire but still doesn’t burn up. God, from within the fire-bush, tells Moses to take off his shoes because the place where he’s standing, that place where God has come to speak directly with him, is holy ground. That’s how I felt on this otherwise ordinary July evening in my messy living room with its dirty carpet. I wanted to take off my shoes and throw my hands in the air. Holy ground.

My father-in-law had no idea what he was doing, I’m certain – thus my astonishment. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken to him about our goals for our son, about his emotional needs. My dad says it best when he said that for this particular child, the primary question of his life is “Do I matter?” We spend a large part of our days trying to figure out how to build this truth into his little life, and then, without warning or prompting, someone sits in our home and tells him the very thing he needs most to hear.

In the Bible, whenever God wants to make a point or commemorate something important, He will often change a name. There is such power in naming something. When he called Abram to leave his homeland and follow Him to an unknown place where He would then build Abram’s family to be a mighty nation, God’s chosen people, He changed His name to Abraham. When He called Jacob to continue that line, he renamed him Israel. The pattern continues throughout the Story of scripture. In Revelation, we are told that when God’s kingdom is established finally and forever, we will all receive new names. The pattern echoes with places as well as people. Hagar names the place where God came to meet her. Jacob names the place where He saw God in a vision. If you want to give something lasting value, if you want it to mean something, you give it a name.

We do this for our children. We give them names that are meaningful to us. Whether it’s a family name or a new name, people tend to put a significant amount of thought into naming their children. It becomes especially powerful for the children that we adopt into our family. We don’t just give them a name, we change their name. Their identity is not exactly the same anymore. They identify with a new family, become grafted into a new history.

This re-naming process, it’s become a life-script for our family. We mostly call it redemption.

Everyone else has called you bad: we call you good. They’ve said you’re weak: we call you courageous. Others might call you stupid: we point to your intelligence. They might call you mean: we call out the kindness. You’ve been rejected: we delight in you. They call you an orphan: we call you family. They might say ordinary: we say you are a masterpiece. Everyone else in your life has said you’re worthless: we call you worthy.

You know, I need this just as much as my children. I need to name things. I need to call them out in specific ways at specific times lest I lose my focus on what matters, on what’s true. It’s how we change the script. This story that seems like it should turn out bad? It’s going to work out for good. We name it so. Even during the very worst of the summer months when we feel like we’re taking more steps back than we are forward, we get these moments. These holy moments when God uses the most precious of men to speak to the most precious of boys. God is in the business of redemption. I just get to be a part of it. He’s the one doing the rescuing, and I am newly reminded of His capability to do just that.